Expandable stents have now proved to be extremely useful in treating occluded blood vessels and/or diseased blood vessels. Whereas there are numerous expandable stents that are now commercially available, these stents invariably undergo a foreshortening in axial length as a result of their radial expansion. When treating a diseased blood vessel, and oftentimes when treating an occluded blood vessel, such as a coronary artery or other peripheral vessel, there is a desire to carry a tubular graft in surrounding relationship to the stent in order to deliver the graft with the stent to patch a diseased vascular location affected with lesions or the like. It is believed such grafts may prevent intimal cell proliferation caused by direct contact of a metal stent with the vessel wall which frequently otherwise results in early stent occlusion. Heretofore, truly acceptable techniques have not been developed for carrying such grafts to a desired location in surrounding relationship to a stent on a balloon catheter or the like. Because such present commercially available stents undergo axial foreshortening as a result of expansion, tubular grafts secured to the exterior of such a stent would be likewise subject to such foreshortening and would undergo undesirable wrinkling even if they were slightly elastic.